After reconsideration of my original story, I find that there is more than enough blame to go around on both sides and that there were warning signs that were ignored.
Last Friday while at work, my Inbox exploded with news about a “climate skeptic journal getting canceled”. It was news to me, because I didn’t even know there was one in existence. This post is an update that post I made on Friday: The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco: strong armed science tactics are overkill, due process would work better. Today’s post is done with the benefit of more detailed information and more time than I had then.
Much of the mail I received Friday centered around this post by Jo Nova: Science paper doubts IPCC, so whole journal gets terminated!
Jo’s post details that a particular phrase in the announcement seemed to be the reason for the termination of the journal. The editor’s announcement (the first version) is reproduced below, bold, Jo’s:
Termination of the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics
Copernicus Publications started publishing the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics (PRP) in March 2013. The journal idea was brought to Copernicus’ attention and was taken rather critically in the beginning, since the designated Editors-in-Chief were mentioned in the context of the debates of climate skeptics. However, the initiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics.
Recently, a special issue was compiled entitled “Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts”. Besides papers dealing with the observed patterns in the heliosphere, the special issue editors ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they “doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project” (Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 205–206, 2013).
Copernicus Publications published the work and other special issue papers to provide the spectrum of the related papers to the scientists for their individual judgment. Following best practice in scholarly publishing, published articles cannot be removed afterwards.
We at Copernicus Publications wish to distance ourselves from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP. Of course, scientific dispute is controversial and should allow contradictory opinions which can then be discussed within the scientific community. However, the recent developments including the expressed implications (see above) have led us to this drastic decision.
Interested scientists can reach the online library at: www.pattern-recogn-phys.net
Martin Rasmussen
January 2014
Initially, this looked like another case of suppression due to the anti-IPCC message conveyed in the PRP Special Edition, much like we’ve seen in Climategate where an email campaign was used to pressure editors, and if the editors didn’t kowtow, “the team” would work to remove them. The Phil Jones email “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow” immediately sprang to mind.
My view was that the journal editor got “team” pressure, such as we witnessed James Annan crowing about, and they caved.
Kudos to Copernicus for the rapid and decisive way in which they dealt with this problem. The problems at the journal were was first brought to my attention by ThingsBreak just last night, I emailed various people to express my concerns and the journal (which was already under close scrutiny by the publisher) was closed down within 24h.
I pointed out that the best way is to let due process take its course:
While the shutdown of the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics that published a special edition on planetary tidal influence on climate is likely a bit of overkill, rebuttals would have been the right way to handle it rather than the Climategate style strong-arm gang tactics exhibited against journal editors…
But then later, after my piece was published, I learned there was far more to the story, and that Copernicus had changed their statement, adding this paragraph:
“In addition, the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.”
That seems like some post facto CYA to me, or, it could also be just sloppiness due to what appears to be the “panic” they were under after getting hit with an email campaign from James Annan’s “various people”.
Jo wondered in her update:
Copernicus is a large publishing group which also publishes many other journals. I wonder if “nepotism” is the word for pal-review which occurs all the time…
It turns out that “pal-review” was indeed a problem, and that both sides should have seen this showdown coming well in advance. Had either made some effort to head it off, you wouldn’t be reading about it now.
First, let me say that it takes a lot of courage and effort to put together a special edition for a journal, and I admire the people involved for doing that, even though I disagree with much of what was presented.
Secondly, it takes a lot of work to do it right. Doing it right means getting it done where any contestable items of special interest, pal-review, and other biases aren’t part of the publication. That’s where it went wrong.
Third, if the climate skeptic community became aware of a pal-review issue like this in climate science, we’d be all over it. We should hold our own community to the same standards.
In his post about the affair, Roger Tattersall, who was both an editor and an author of a paper in the special edition, responded to William Connolley in this comment with a [Reply].
William Connolley says:
“In addition, the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing…”
Oooh you bad boys. RT: are you in favour of nepotism in review? Come on, don’t be shy.
[Reply] I asked for reviewers from outside our discipline, but with it being a small field, there was crossover. But because the papers are open access, anyone can download, review and comment, so I don’t think it’s a big problem. Let our scientific work stand on its merit, rather than impugning the honesty of the scientists.
Climate science itself suffers from the small field crossover problem to an extent, but as we saw in Climategate emails, often they turn a blind eye to it.
I have no problem with their work in the PRP Special Edition standing or failing on its own merit, but I do have a problem with the way they went about this. For example, in WUWT comments we have:
People are missing the key point,
http://www.pattern-recognition-in-physics.net/
“…the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.”
http://publications.copernicus.org/for_reviewers/obligations_for_referees.html
“4. A referee should be sensitive even to the appearance of a conflict of interest when the manuscript under review is closely related to the referee’s work in progress or published. If in doubt, the referee should return the manuscript promptly without review, advising the editor of the conflict of interest or bias.
5. A referee should not evaluate a manuscript authored or co-authored by a person with whom the referee has a personal or professional connection if the relationship would bias judgment of the manuscript.”
The problem is obvious, the papers list in many cases one of the reviewers as an author in the same edition and in some cases a known skeptic. While this is no different than what alarmists do all the time, skeptics will be held to a much higher standard and should not allow themselves to fall into these traps.
This makes what would be a clear censorship argument irrelevant.
Basically, they asked to play in the peer reviewed sandbox at Copernicus, then didn’t abide by the rules of the sandbox for peer review. That was the recipe for disaster everybody should have seen coming.
Which is confirmed:
Poptech says:January 18, 2014 at 3:56 pm
tallbloke says:
I’m surprised Poptech fell for the Rasmussen ruse. In his first email to the editors he said he was shutting down PRP because it had allowed sceptics to publish heresy about the IPCC dogma. Only later did he realise the own goal and cook up the unsubstantiated smears about “potential” issues with review.
With the original version I agree with you and on these grounds alone I consider this censorship but that is not the whole story.
My problem is with the process of using authors, editors and known skeptics as reviewers. This is not an unsubstantiated smear but verifiable,
Here are two examples:
Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming
“Reviewed by: N.-A. Morner and one anonymous referee”
Dr. Morner is qualified to review this paper but he is an editor and a known skeptic with a potential conflict of interest in that he is sympathetic to Dr. Scafetta’s arguments.
The Hum: log-normal distribution and planetary–solar resonance
“Reviewed by: H. Jelbring and one anonymous referee”
Hans Jelbring is again qualified but an author in this edition and a known skeptic with a potential conflict of interest in that he is sympathetic to your arguments.
And the reason I am told they published their names, was because they were concerned with having a conflict of interest! Thus, by the publishers own rules they should not be reviewing these papers. The saving grace is that one of the reviewers was anonymous but this is still going to lead to wild speculation for many reasons, especially since the editors were skeptics.
Why give alarmists the ammunition of Pal-Review? I don’t understand this.
Regardless, unless the papers get retracted I will list them, so people can read them and make up their own minds, but I will not be endorsing them nor defending the review process.
One of the PRP editors, Morner, published his own paper in the edition. The other editor reviewed it. And, Morner reviewed other papers. No clearer example of circular review exists.
And then there’s this:
richardscourtney says: January 18, 2014 at 9:04 am
Friends:
I withdraw the suggestions in my earlier post at January 18, 2014 at 1:58 am.
When I made that post I was not aware that the journal used the same people as authors and reviewers for the papers of each other in a Special Edition on a stated subject. Such a practice is a clear example of pal-review.
The Special Edition should not have been published when its peer review procedures were a clear malpractice. Whether the reasons for withdrawal of the Special Edition also warranted closure of the journal requires additional information but it seems likely.
And so, the perception of the pal-review has trumped any science that was presented, and few people will hear of the reasons behind that problem.
The problem the PRP authors and editors have is existence in a small like-minded universe, yet they don’t see the problem that presents to outsiders looking in. The situation reminded me of a Star Trek TNG episode “Remember Me“ where Dr. Beverly Crusher gets trapped in a “static warp bubble”. The pool of people she interacts with keeps shrinking as the bubble shrinks, and she keeps trying to convince the remaining people of this fact while they look at her like she’s crazy. She finally ends up alone, and doesn’t realize the reality of her isolation until she asks the ship’s computer “What is the nature of the universe?” and it answers:
“…the universe as a spheroid structure 705 meters in diameter.”
That’s about the size of the PRP Special Edition universe, and like the static warp bubble in the TNG episode, it is collapsing in on itself. The big problem with this event is that while that PRP Special Edition universe is collapsing in one place, it has exploded elsewhere, and that explosion has painted all climate skeptics with a broad brush.
Some news coverage of the event:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/01/18/0036252/alleging-malpractice-with-climate-skeptic-papers-publisher-kills-journal
It was easy to predict what kind of coverage we’d see.
Note there’s no distinction here of a “subset” of climate skeptics, or even “a few climate skeptics”, no, ALL climate skeptics are being painted with this fiasco. That means people like Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, the Pielkes, Curry, Singer, Happer, and many others are being lumped into this even though they had nothing to do with it. I doubt any of them even knew about it, and I daresay that if they did, they’d have similar objections to what has already been voiced on WUWT about the process.
And that, makes me upset. What makes me even more upset is that this mess was wholly preventable if either Copernicus or the PRP Special Edition group had realized what was at stake and done something about it before it became the next target of “the team” looking to pressure an editor like we saw in Climategate. Had I known about it before it exploded. I certainly would have voiced objections about the use of a small and specialized universe of editors and reviewers. Almost any reasonable person looking at this from the outside can see this pal-review issue would eventually blow up, because no matter how careful they might have been internally to prevent such issues, the appearance from the outside of bias is what gets written about, as we’ve seen.
And, there were clear warnings.
Steve Mosher writes to me with this
A while back I happened upon the Tallbloke journal (comments from Tallbloke’s Talkshop)
Steven Mosher says:
cool. not only did you review each other papers ( where the reviewer had the ethical courage to identify himself) but you referenced your own papers that were simultaneously submitted but un published.
wow, way better than the CRU scams.
Of course Ian wilson chimed in
when he knew what I said was true
more
Steven Mosher says: (bold mine)
“Ian:Three years ago at Lisbon, Mosh told me I needed to provide some numbers to back up our solar-planetary hypothesis. Now we are able to do that, he’s falling back on insult by comparing us to people who bent data and stats methods, intimidated journal editors, removed adverse data, hid sample sizes etc.
It’s standard fare from the people who have lost the plot on what the scientific method is. They play the man rather than the ball, because their threadbare theory has failed.”
No Rog, I’m hold [sic] you to the same standard that we hold mann [sic] and others to.
1. Your [sic] the editor of a journal and you publish your own papers. In the climategatemails we found similar problems; we found authors who selected journals because they had a guy on the inside.
Second, we complained because IPCC chapter authors were referring to their own work. Self interest. I can hardly complain about this practice WRT the IPCC and Mann and then let you slide simply because you are a friend. Further, when I was asked for a list of journals to submit to I eliminated all journals where our authors served as editors or as emeritus editors.
2. We complained about climate scientists citing papers that had not yet been published. Look through your references you’ll find the examples. Again, integrity. And yes, you’ll note for example that our AMO paper ( that confirms some of scaffettas work) was held back from publication until all the other papers it cites were published. To do otherwise is to build a house on quicksand.
3. I missed your policy on archiving data and code. I did note some people giving links as references. Sad. bare minimum would be link with the date accessed.
Finally, I looked for your numbers. they are still missing. At a minimum I should be able to go to the SI, get the data and run the code to make sure that the charts presented actually come from the method described.
Since you’re the editor perhaps you tell us how you plan to practice the things we agreed on long ago. Don’t feel bad, folks who think its not the sun get pissed when I tell them to share data and code.. to basically show their work. But you should not be surprised that I would argue that everybody, not just Mann and Jones, should aim for reproducable research. I’ve been advocating it since 2007. Why would I listen to any special pleading from friends. For example, see my comments in july of 2012 on steve mcintyre’s blog where he and Anthony get an earful from me.
It’s a principle for me.
Did Tattersall or Wilson then do anything about this? It doesn’t seem so, but then again I’m, not privy to what went on behind the scenes, like everybody else, all I can do is look at their universe from the outside and note the clearly evident problems they seem unable or unwilling to see.
And the warnings went back even further, from RetractionWatch:
But scholarly librarian Jeffrey Beall noticed some…patterns in the journal back in
SeptemberJuly:The journal’s editor-in-chief, Sid-Ali Ouadfeul, who works for the Algerian Petroleum Institute, started publishing his research in journal articles around 2010, but he’s only been cited a couple times, not counting his many self-citations.
Co-editor-in-chief Nils-Axel Morner is a noted climate “skeptic” who believes in dowsing (water divining) and believes he has found the “Hong Kong of the [ancient] Greeks” in Sweden, among other things. These beliefs are documented in Wikipedia and The Guardian. Morner has over 125 publications, but pattern recognition does not appear to be among his specialties.
Moreover, speaking of “pattern recognition,” my analysis revealed some self-plagiarism by editor Ouadfeul in the very first paper the journal published, an article he himself co-authored.
Did he ask Copernicus to do something about it? Unknown, but it seems likely they would have been made aware of it. Again Copernicus is a seasoned publisher, they should have solved the problem well before it detonated into the science landscape.
So, in summary:
- While the idea of a special edition is fine, and certainly what science was presented in it should stand or fail on its own and have the opportunity for due process, but now that has been made next to impossible.
- The papers are still available at this link. I urge readers to examine them and draw their own conclusions not only about the science, but about the review and publishing process.
- The public perception problem of pal-review could have been prevented had either the journal itself or the people in the PRP Special Edition universe recognized and corrected the pal-review appearance that their small PRP universe presented to outsiders.
- At multiple blogs, including WUWT and Tallbloke’s Talkshop, some people are now defending the process of pal-review as a “more productive form of collaboration to produce a better result”. I’m sorry, that’s just not only wronger than wrong, it’s FUBAR.
- Copernicus and Rasmussen appeared to be indifferent to the appearance of a pal-review issue until they started to get pressure from “the team” spurred on by James Annan. They panicked, and in their panic, presented a sloppy argument for closure, which had to be revised.
- Knowing of the increasing sea of science journals and choices, Copernicus did what they thought they had to do to protect their brand, but they did it ham-handedly, and invited the Streisand effect.
- Copernicus and Rasmussen aren’t newcomers to this arena, they are considered professionals by the science community. They should have recognized this problem and acted on it long ago. Had they done so, we’d not be reading about it today.
- That said, with warning signs present that we’ve seen before in Climategate, and with the people in the PRP universe aware of those things, they should have been able to see the problem and make corrections themselves. Ideally, they never should have fallen into the trap in the first place.
- When warned about the problem, Tattersall and Wilson should have done something to head it off. They may have, I don’t know, but I see no evidence of it. Likewise it seems almost certain Copernicus/Rasmussen would have been made aware of the problem in July 2013 by Beall, and should have done something if they were aware. If Beall did nothing, he’s culpable.
- The coverage of the affair paints all climate skeptics unfairly, since only a small group of climate skeptics operated within the PRP universe, mostly unknown to the larger body of climate skeptics.
- Skepticism is about asking skillful questions to examine if a claim is true or not. In this affair we have a small group of people who think they have the answer, and they browbeat people who think their answer isn’t accurate or representative. A good skeptic (and scientist) practices doubt, and should embrace criticisms, looking to see where they may have gone wrong.
- This fiasco pretty much dashes any chance of any sort of climate skeptic or citizen science based journal coming into existence, because should such a journal be started, no matter how careful, no matter how exacting, no matter how independent, this fiasco is going to be held up as an example as to why nobody from the larger science community should participate.
It’s a real mess, and instead of apologizing for creating it, what we are seeing from the PRP Special Edition universe is indignant rhetoric because nobody is paying attention to their ideas.
All around, a tragedy, and a wholly preventable one.
In the paper “Planetary beat and solar–terrestrial responses” by N.-A. Mörner, I read that “The multi-body interaction of the planetary motions on the Sun’s motion is so large that the Sun’s motion around the centre of mass is perturbed by up to about 1 solar radius.”
That’s quite amazing. One learns something new everyday. (I wonder where further authoritative information about this fact can be found?)
I’ve defended Dr. Scafetta and Dr. Morner all over the place from baseless charges, so please spare me your conspiracy theories. Just like Richard I thought this was a clear case of censorship but when I investigated the nepotism peer-review charges I found irrefutable evidence to support the allegation. What do you want us to do sit here and look like hypocrites and endorse a process that can so easily be attacked as “pal-review”?
I’ve had disagreements with Anthony, Richard and Willis so it is laughable you call us a “group” or as Roger keeps ridiculously repeating, “Team WUWT”.
J Calvert NUK says:
January 21, 2014 at 3:43 pm
In the paper “Planetary beat and solar–terrestrial responses” by N.-A. Mörner, I read that “The multi-body interaction of the planetary motions on the Sun’s motion is so large that the Sun’s motion around the centre of mass is perturbed by up to about 1 solar radius.”
That’s quite amazing. One learns something new everyday. (I wonder where further authoritative information about this fact can be found?)
————————————–
This may be surprising, but is rather basic physics. If all planets would be aligned on one side, the barycenter would be 800.000 km outside the sun.
http://mechanicalintegrator.com/2009/solar-system-center-of-mass/
Poptech … I think we all do a disservice to the scientific process by ignoring the quality of science and the quality of the peer review here. You can say all you want they “forfeited” the right for the science to be considered, but that is a in my opinion a highly flawed approach.
First, I am certain the people involved did not set out to purposely violate the rules. Whether their actions are right or wrong, I simply do not believe their intent was to violate the rules or cause this controversy.
Second, this behavior occurs regularly on the warmist side. Recently the debacle with Lewandowsky, which saw a gigantic abuse of peer review – a silly game of musical chairs among reviewers, with multiple different iteration before they settled on the Editor, who was also an important cite, and a Journalism graduate student highly sympathetic to Lewandowsky, and with a prior business relationship with his employer. There couldn’t be a much better example of the corruption of peer review than this, yet essentially this flagrant abuse was ignored.
And worse – the damage was already done, just as with Lewandowsky’s prior ridiculous “Moon Landing is a Hoax” paper, the Recursive Fury paper WAS covered in the media. They achieved the desired affect. In these cases peer review was just corrupted, the entire scientific process was tortured – intentionally – in order to generate negative and highly prejudicial press towards the skeptic community.
We did attack this abuse, for what little good was done as a result, and rightfully so too should we address the issues here. I agree we should stand up and condemn “pal” review whenever it occurs.
That said – being directly involved with the Lewandowsky debacle – I believe it is equally important to acknowledge the differences. With Lewandowsky – all of the alleged “science” was outright garbage. Soundly and completely refuted on all levels; from data collection, the ‘process’ and right on to the ‘science’ behind the conclusions. It was ALL garbage, with the authors manufacturing ‘findings’ out of nearly thin air.
The work was complete garbage, the conclusions were complete garbage, the entire process was a complete joke.
And they then tried to use (or abuse) the peer review process to sanctify the garbage they had produced. It is clear they shopped for peer reviewers they thought would be sympathetic to their goals.
The reviewers were originally Elaine McKewon and Michael Wood. This was changed to McKewon and editor Viren Swami. Then the list of reviewers was changed to McKewon, Swami and Prathiba Natesan, Then Natesan was removed from the list of reviewers, returning the list to McKewon and Swami again.
Dr. Michael Wood’s “primary research interest (and expertise) is in the psychology of conspiracy theories.” which would appear to make him a qualified reviewer. Ms. McKewon on the other hand was a “journalism” graduate student, who was nothing more than a rabid activist – a “junior” Lewandowsky, who also had a publishing relationship with Lewandosky’s institution. Her twitter posts should tell what you need to know: http://archive.is/nUDbr
Dr. Woods told me he expressed reservations, which were not addressed by the authors, and he asked to be removed as a reviewer. Dr. Natesan, was by all appearances highly qualified, especially in the area of Psych statistics, and also was withdrawn.
Leaving the Editor, Dr. Viren Swami, whose own work is a cornerstone of Lewandowsky’s work, and the highly sympathetic activist grad student as the remaining reviewers.
The appearance here is of outright corruption and direct manipulation of the peer review process. Yet nothing happened. The paper s still there:
http://www.frontiersin.org/personality_science_and_individual_differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/abstract
Despite far, far more egregious behavior – the appearance of intentional and direct manipulation of the peer review process, the Journal is unaffected. And the publishers claims the problems would be “investigated … as swiftly as possible and which Frontiers management considers the most responsible course of action,” are shown for what they are. Lip service. Almost a year later nothing has been done.
In my opinion, by attacking rather than simply ‘addressing’ the concerns with peer review here, we fail to make a very important distinction. The intent. We lump the actions here, which I can see no overt intent to defraud, with the clearly intentional peer review corruption with Lewandowsky’s papers.
Each of Lewandowsky’s garbage papers, despite the peer review issues, were thoroughly evaluated on their science by the skeptic community. The work was invalidated by detailed review. Which also invalidated the peer review and proved intent.
The attitude that because the authors here are alleged to have violated some rule, we should ignore the science is seriously flawed. We would not, and do not, dismiss the science with garbage like Lewandowsky (nor any of the other myriad questionable other works from the warmist side) – and to do so here, for work of committed (whether we agree with their findings or not) skeptics, is in my opinion a serious problem.
I believe we do far more harm to the skeptic side by the different, much higher, standard being applied here, as compared to how we treat similar, worse offenses by the warmist side.
If we truly cared about protecting the image of skeptics, we should, while acknowledging the errors and failings, review the underlying science – discuss and debate, prove or disprove – the actual WORK product and conclusions.
Zig Ziglar says we should praise the player while criticizing the performance. I think that applies well her – on a couple levels – both as applies to the individuals, and as applies to the science.
Acknowledging there appears no intent to use pal review to support bad science, or at least lets question the players and identify what their intent actually was. Review and validate or disprove the science – which will also identify whether the peer review was accurate or not – is what we should be doing in my opinion.
These guys, whether we condone their actions or not, deserve at minimum the same treatment as we afford the other side.
Eating our “own” over a violation over rules, while ignoring their science, is first, unfair. And second, again in my opinion, does more damage than the concerns with peer review.
We need to stop the witch hunt. Follow the process we would if this was Lewandowsky or anyone similar. Validate the science, which helps validate the peer review. If the science is generally sound (and please note that does not necessarily mean “proven”) then the peer review, regardless of the rules violations, is also shown as generally sound.
Validate the science, which validates the quality of the peer review. We do that for the ‘other’ side – we owe the same to “our” side. Then we can fairly and rightfully investigate and address the peer review process violations on their own merits.
My 2 cents. Your mileage may vary.
Since this thread still seems to be alive, let me offer my rebuttal to those who have critiqued my much earlier post regarding Rule #4. Some posters have pointed to this rule as the one violated by the editor of PRP and justified the closing of the journal. In their reply to my post they have pointed to one sentence in Rule #4.
“If in doubt, the referee should return the manuscript promptly without review, advising the editor of the conflict of interest or bias.”
Again, those posters are misinterpreting this sentence and inferring from it something it simply does not say. This sentence plainly states that if a referee thinks he may have a conflict, he should notify the editor, stop his review of the manuscript, and return it to the editor. In other words, submit his resignation. It does not state that the editor cannot, under any circumstance, decide to have the referee review the manuscript despite the conflict and to return the manuscript to the referee so he can review it.
As an experienced, worldwide publisher, surely Copernicus’s Editorial Rules have gone through a number of reviews, including by their lawyers, before being adopted. In my experience, corporate lawyers hate ambiguities and strive for absolute clarity — a “say what you mean” mantra. Rule #X: Under no circumstance shall an editor use a referee with a conflict of interest.
Perhaps it would help to look at this rule from a different perspective. Both Rule #4 and #5 begin with “A referee should…” They go on to set forth the responsibilities of being a referee and the actions a referee should take to fulfill those responsibilities. These rules make no mention of what the author, the editor or the publisher should or shouldn’t do. Therefore, how can an editor be fired for violating a rule that only applies to the referee?
Please do not infer from the above that I am advocating for the wide-spread, willy-nilly use of pal reviews. I am not. However, if there is a conflict, it is the responsibility of the editor to disclose it to the reader. In this instance the editor did just that (though I agree with those who say the editor should have handle things better).
In an earlier post, Poptech, to bolster his analysis, presented a fictitious scenario of Mann starting a journal which solely employed his “pals” as editors, writers and reviewers. As long as Mann fully disclosed the names of all the players involved with each and every article in each and every issue, then I don’t believe Mann would be doing anything unethical, nor should he be accused of malpractice.
That said, would I lend much credence to any article published in Mann’s journal? No.
Would I cite an article from Mann’s journal in any of my writings? No.
If another author were to cite an article, would I view said citation as bolstering the author’s paper? No.
Would I subscribe to Mann’s journal, or even read it. No.
If enough people felt the same way, the journal would be shut down, not due to malpractice, but rather market forces (both from the financial marketplace and the marketplace of ideas).
This whole “scandal” began when the publisher announced the closure of PRP and gave a reason which many viewed as biased and unwarranted. After much blow back, the publisher then came back with the much more serious, though somewhat vague, accusation of nepotism and malpractice.
Let me present my own fictitious scenario. Bob is the worldwide publisher of numerous journals. One day he announces that he has long been concerned about the philosophies held by the editor, Joe, of one of his journals. Bob explains that those philosophical differences had become so great that he has decided to shut down Joe’s journal. Later, after much blow back, Bob says, oops, I forgot to mention that I’m also shutting Joe down because I believe Joe has been embezzling from me.
The question is, which is the true reason Bob closed down Joe’s journal. Did Bob, in the heat and confusion of the situation, completely forget the far more egregious accusation of embezzlement. Or, was it just a CYA excuse after having received much blowback for shutting Joe down over philosophical differences? Only Bob knows the answer.
As with others, this will be my last comment.
I need to acknowledge that Anthony says many of the same things I do in his points above. I think we should follow much of his advice – validate the science. Validate the quality and accuracy of the peer review. Discuss the seemingly increasingly prevalent use of non-published papers as reference cites.
And then investigate BOTH the peer review process AND the journal’s apparent knee jerk response – certainly there can be no legitimate review of an important issue in 24 hours.
Address the real issues – in proper perspective.
richardscourtney says:
Richard,
Although I stated in my post that I agree with most of your comments, I was a bit uncomfortable with your use of ‘miscreants’, I let it go because I have occasionally called my two children “a couple of miscreants” but obviously in an affectionate way. I have now read the posts you linked to at Jo Nova’s and it was pointed out to you that miscreant can be defined as “depraved, villainous and / or dishonest”.
May I respectfully request you withdraw the word, otherwise you may reasonably be asked who you are referring to and explain exactly how they have been “depraved, villainous and dishonest”.
Respectfully Yours,
Richard (Hot under the collar)
Manfred. The position of centroid is not difficult to estimate. But does it actually ‘perturb the motion’ of the sun? If Jupiter was (for arguments sake) 2x as far away, the centroid would be even further out. But I find it hard to believe that the motion of sun would be ‘more perturbed’ in this scenario.
I think we have entered into loony land.
calvertn says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:27 pm
But does it actually ‘perturb the motion’ of the sun? If Jupiter was (for arguments sake) 2x as far away, the centroid would be even further out. But I find it hard to believe that the motion of sun would be ‘more perturbed’ in this scenario.
The Sun and the planets are all in free fall and do not ‘feel’ any forces no matter where the center of mass is.
Once people have to resort to defending the most ridiculous fictitious example I could come up with regarding Michael Mann pal-reviewing with Phil Jones, Gavin Schmidt and John Cook simply because you refuse to concede, I believe I have won the argument.
All of you dubious characters supporting the obviously WRONG axing of the journal are forgetting that it’s not about the purported ‘pal review’ it’s about the science.
It’s all about the SCIENCE. It doesn’t matter which scientists review a paper provided they can provide detailed analysis of their conclusion that conforms to logic and scientific reasoning, something that never happens with the Alarmists.
The difference that we should focus on is no Alarmist publication ever got the ‘oh no it’s pal review’ treatment and they all were easily debunked regarding man made global warming.
I challenge people to find fault with the science in the paper.
Geez, It’s like a bunch of alarmists are pretending to be WUWT’ers
Jo Nova sums it up well:
“1. The media are going to one-sidedly cherry pick a belated unsubstantiated excuse anyway. They always falsely try to pin any flaw to “all skeptics”. Why amplify that or accept it? I would point out their hypocrisy, rather than join the chorus.
2. The real priorities are logic and reason, evidence and free speech. In the peer-pal debate there is no win worth achieving. Peer review is a weak system anyway. And current journal editors are only going to send alarmist papers to independent skeptics as a matter of course when everybody realizes the real debate occurred online, and some bloggers were closer to the truth than Nature. Let’s help independent scientists continue to push the bounds of knowledge.
3. As far as dashing “…any chance of any sort of climate skeptic or citizen science based journal coming into existence…”. I would say, No. Not at all.
4. Until Copernicus shows that the papers contained flaws worse than MBH98, which was not even retracted, terminating a journal for no named error at all is a scandal. When will Copernicus be closing the other journals?”
sabretruthtiger says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:39 pm
I challenge people to find fault with the science in the paper.
I did: upthread at January 21, 2014 at 1:27 pm
This strawman has been argued ad nauseum. It is an irrelevant argument because no one is going to take the science seriously if they believe the peer-review process was broken. Nor is anyone going to care about your opinion on the “quality” of the peer-review since they will believe it was “rubber stamped”. I have no idea why you do not get this. The only thing flawed is not protecting yourself from such easy criticisms.
I am beginning to believe the rules were never even read.
The rest of your comment equates to:
1. Two wrongs make a right.
2. Stories of other wrongs that have been done.
3, We should argue the strawman for the 1000th time.
4, Make excuses, look like hypocrites.
sabretruthtiger,
Why did they go through the trouble to create the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics with Copernicus Publications?
WillieB says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:15 pm
“In an earlier post, Poptech, to bolster his analysis, presented a fictitious scenario of Mann starting a journal which solely employed his “pals” as editors, writers and reviewers. As long as Mann fully disclosed the names of all the players involved with each and every article in each and every issue, then I don’t believe Mann would be doing anything unethical, nor should he be accused of malpractice.”
I actually thought personally that Poptech had made a good point but, what do you mean fictitious?
In practical terms, didn’t climategate demonstrate that was exactly what some of ‘the team’ were doing by sacking and planting their own editors and reviewers in order to keep out skeptics work and be able to cite each other. The only difference is it was done deceitfully and when they were caught out – guess what – the journals weren’t pulled and nothing happened to them. You didn’t see many of the alarmists calling peer review foul then did you?
Also you didn’t require a PhD, Degree, HNC or even to be a scientist to know it was wrong.
In fact, if ‘the team’ actually got together and started a journal but then were caught out giving biased reviews, no the journal wouldn’t be pulled. In fact they would probably be awarded a Knighthood, Nobel Prize and Congressional Medal of Honor to boot!
Yes, double standards and censorship, it’s alright as long as it’s for ‘the cause’.
They are the ones who have made a mockery of the peer review process, let’s not forget.
Lsvalgaard, Re “The Sun and the planets are all in free fall and do not ‘feel’ any forces no matter where the center of mass is.” That seems to make more sense. So, I wonder what is the basis of Dr Morner’s assertion that “the Sun’s motion around the centre of mass is perturbed by up to about 1 solar radius”? The paper (Planetary beat and solar–terrestrial responses) did not seem to include a citation in support of it.
calvertn says:
January 21, 2014 at 5:12 pm
I wonder what is the basis of Dr Morner’s assertion that “the Sun’s motion around the centre of mass is perturbed by up to about 1 solar radius”?
It is not disputed that the center of mass of the solar system can at times be that much outside of the sun, but that does not ‘perturb’ the sun and cause upheavals of any kind.
For further perspective on the centre of mass issue, consider that the centre of mass of the Earth-Moon system is only approx. 1700km below the surface of the Earth. Every day (due to the spin of the Earth being at a different pace to the orbit of the moon), this notional point is “dragged” right around through the lower mantle. Somehow we survive this marauding; it’s almost as if there is no effect at all…
sabretruthtiger says:
“I challenge people to find fault with the science in the paper.”
The faults are relatively easy to find, I challenge people to find the science in the paper.
lsvalgaard says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:43 pm
sabretruthtiger says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:39 pm
I challenge people to find fault with the science in the paper.
I did: upthread at January 21, 2014 at 1:27 pm
——————-
Glad that you did Dr. S., thank you..
Poptech. I attempted to reasonably, rationally and intelligently state my opinion. And that is that WE – the skeptic community – first judge the science. Which will tell us MUCH about the quality of the peer review, regardless of who the reviewers were.
Only THEN can we make a reasoned and measured response to the concerns.
No matter how you try to frame it, it is a FAR different issue if “pal” review resulted in poor review, in rubber stamping rather than fairly reviewing the science. It is imperative in my opinion to know the quality of the science and quality of the resultant peer review, in order to judge the alleged violations.
If the science in these papers is shown to be bad or poor, then the peer review was poor by allowing these papers t pass and be published. If, however, the science was solid, then the quality of the peer review, regardless of the reviewers, is NOT at issue.
And in that case we are left with a far, far different issue than if the peer review was pal-sourced and too friendly.
If you cannot understand why that is important I cannot help you.
Keep in mind the object of peer review is not to necessarily prove or disprove the science, but rather whether it and its conclusions are credible.
WE are the ones judging here, and our – the skeptic community’s – response here will have a significant affect on the public perception. It is not about future credibility of these authors or anything else. If we ignore the proper path – if we ignore the way we treat warmist’s papers – then we cede all credibility … and deserve the ridicule we get.
Your position – ignore everything the didn’t follow the rules – only serves to guarantee the latter.
This situation should be treated exactly as we do others. FIRST, and foremost, review and validate whether the science is credible and accurate. Then, with that info in hand we can review the credibility and quality of the peer review.
And I think you would have to agree – how we approach the failures in the peer review process absolutely IS affected by whether the review was credible, as compared to if it was sympathetic and promotional, ignoring the facts at hand…
Roger only helps to bury PRP the more he tries to “explain” things,
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/science-is-not-done-by-peer-or-pal-review-but-by-evidence-and-reason/#comment-1375897
The charges from the publisher were that they were concerned the journal would be used to focus on climate change topics,
“However, the initiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics.”
Dr. Scafetta previously argued that most of the paper don’t even discuss climate change and here we have Roger arguing they most certainly do infer this!
Now we also have confirmation that the anonymous reviewers were mostly “colleagues”!
“7. Editors should avoid situations of real or perceived conflicts of interest if the relationship would bias judgement of the manuscript. Such conflicts may include, but are not limited to, handling papers from present and former students, from colleagues with whom the editor has recently collaborated, and from those in the same institution.”
I have never seen someone help to wreck the train and proceed to set it on fire trying to defend why they wrecked the train.
**shakes head in utter amazement**
I withdraw my initial statement that I was going to list the papers, sorry but I cannot defend this.
A. Scott,
Why did they go through the trouble to create the journal ‘Pattern Recognition in Physics’ with Copernicus Publications?